A Collage of Mixed Impressions
by Spring Zephyr
Summary: Chloé asks Nathaniel for help making a new art project to impress the art club, all the while insisting he and Marc are dating and being far too nice for comfort. Hints of Chloé/Nathaniel and Marc/Nathaniel.


**I haven't had a computer in over a month, so this isn't the best edited thing I've ever posted. But I thought the idea was funny, so I hope you all do too.**

"Art nerd," Chloé barked at him.

Although it's not the rudest thing she's ever called Nathaniel, he rolled his eyes until she rolled hers back and began anew, " _Nathaniel_ , whatever. Do you really think I'd waste time talking to you on lunch break if it weren't important?"

For the first time, Nathaniel noticed her looking around shiftily, as if she were afraid of being seen with him. It annoyed him just as much as it annoyed her - lunch was normally his quiet time, the time of day where he disappeared from everyone's sight and was able to work on his projects without constant interruptions and praise he didn't quite deserve yet. Sometimes he also found time to eat before classes started again.

He bit back a retort, deciding it would be easier to just get this over with and send Chloé on her way. Besides... today he was actually hungry, and he'd told himself he wouldn't take a bite out of his tuna fish sandwich until he'd sketched at least three more panels.

"I'll forgive you this _one_ time," Nathaniel insisted, emphasizing the word 'one' through clenched teeth. "Since it's apparently so _important_. What do you want, Chloé?"

"If you're going to be so rude about it, maybe I won't – "

"Chloé!"

She gaped at him like she couldn't believe he had the nerve to snap at her. Which she probably couldn't. Despite their entire class having reasons to hate her, Chloé struggled to understand why they would.

"I just wanted to know why nobody in your stupid art club likes my collages," Chloé sniffed, and Nathaniel still failed to notice that she was actually upset. It was hidden too well behind a flick of her ponytail and a solid wall of negativity that had been constructed between them, brick by brick, since the day they'd first met. "But if you think I'm wasting your time, I'll just ask your _boyfriend_ instead."

Was she for real right now?

"First of all, Marc's _not_ my boyfriend."

"Oh, whatever. Like I'd care if he were."

"Second, art is supposed to be about the things you love. Or the way you feel. It's a way of expressing yourself – " But that was exactly what Chloé was doing, just without any tact whatsoever. Nathaniel bit his lip and tried again, "I mean, it's about expressing who you are. Saying something about yourself that people normally wouldn't think of."

Chloé stared at him, like she still wasn't –

"So you think you're Ladybug?"

"Ugh, you're hopeless," Nathaniel groaned.

"Excuse me? You draw Ladybug _all the time_! With an explanation as awful as that one, what was I supposed to think?!"

"I really wanted to get some art done, so why don't I - Look, I'll just show you."

He turned to a clean page in his notebook, and picked one of the sharper pencils off the counter. There was a different panel he'd been trying to draw for ages, and maybe talking it through would help. "When I draw Ladybug," Nathaniel began, "I try to really put myself in her mind. Like in this scene, Ladybug is turning down a gift from Chat Noir, but..."

It was easy to picture Ladybug's expression, her polite refusal. Chat Noir's, too. Nathaniel would've felt the same way as Chat, and on top of that he kenw Chat Noir would always have a better chance than him. But maybe Chat Noir felt the same way about someone else – maybe Ladybug had a secret crush that the rest of him didn't know about. (Both he and Marc agreed that, as long as Ladybug continued denying her relationship with Chat on national television, they would avoid making it canon in their comic.)

Realizing this was probably too hard for Chloé to understand, Nathaniel tried to correct himself, "Um, it's like I draw on my own experiences in order to draw what the characters in 'Diary of Ladybug' are going through, and then I translate those experiences into pictures." He turned back to his sketchbook and muttered his breath, incredulously, "Am I actually having a conversation about feelings with Chloé right now?"

He waited nervously for the response.

After a while, Chloé muttered, "'Drawing on your experiences'? ...Oh, I get it! Nathaniel, I didn't know you could be funny!"

Nathaniel forced himself to pretend he hadn't heard that.

"So, um, would you be okay with helping me make a new collage some day?" Chloé asked. "No offense to Sabrina, but I don't exactly think she's the artsy type."

"No-"

"I'll buy you a full set of the most expensive colored pencils in Paris if you do," Chloé singsonged.

"-ot a problem!"

X

And that was how Nathaniel found himself strolling the streets of Paris with Chloé and Sabrina, having an almost civil conversation, something Nathaniel would've never imagined doing until it had actually happened. Both for Chloé's sake and his own sanity, he'd suggested Sabrina come along - as long as they left the camera behind.

"Selfies are not an expression of who you are," he'd informed her gently. It was all he would risk doing while Chloé could still take back her promise to buy those colored pencils.

Then, just to make sure she didn't go back on her promise, he'd insisted that a trip to his favorite art supply store was the first thing on their agenda. She'd further surprised him by throwing a new sketchbook and a set of forty-two watercolors into their basket, even after Nathaniel explained he didn't actually do watercolors. Then she'd asked him what he'd rather have, and he sarcastically suggested a new graphics tablet, which she'd promptly purchased for him while he sputtered dumbly behind her about how it was just a joke.

On top of that, she'd still purchased the watercolors.

Anyway, when he'd told her no selfies – Chloé had glared at him, but hadn't said anything. At least she wasn't going to question his expertise.

Now they were magazine shopping, and the watercolors would be going home with Sabrina later that night, so she could attempt to find her own artistic avenue.

"What about this one?" Sabrina suggested, holding up a thin catalogue that advertised clothes with prices in bold text that made Nathaniel's eyes widen. "You ordered that really cute sweater from here la-"

"It didn't even last all season!" Chloé snapped.

Being told she had to make a collage without a single selfie on it had done wonders to her already unpleasant disposition. For the last half an hour, she'd done nothing but roam the streets with her arms folded, a scowl on her face, stomping her feet angrily the entire way. Chloé had made a toddler cry. Maybe that was normal for her, but still - _she'd made a toddler cry_. With just a glance.

"Collages are more like..." Nathaniel paused, then started over. "They're an easy art form to work with, because all you need is a theme and a vision."

And not much skill, but he wisely left that part unspoken.

"My _vision_ works just fine, thank you very much!" the angry blonde snapped.

"Chloé, he doesn't mean that kind of vision!"

Nathaniel sighed. "Let's start with a theme. Sabrina, can you please let Chloé answer this on her own? Who is 'Chloé Bourgeois'? How would you describe yourself?"

That was easy enough for a theme, and something Chloé seemed interested in doing already. While her initial answers were fairly predictable – money, Adrien, expensive clothes - a little encouragement from himself and Sabrina went a long way. For example, Nathaniel never would've guessed that she was fascinated by flower gardens (but not clothes with floral prints, ick, old lady much?) and street dancing, but thought classic ballets and musicals were boring. She hated watching native movies even though Daddy had bought her a big screen TV, and they decided to express that by cutting block letters out of various magazines to spell "no films!"

"It looks so ugly and mismatched," Chloé muttered, while Nathaniel and Sabrina glued the letters in place at the corner. She refused to touch the glue, and Nathaniel refused to let himself and Sabrina do all the work. They'd eventually compromised by letting Chloé direct where all the pictures went and having Sabrina and himself glue them in place.

"That's what a collage is," Nathaniel smiled. He was surprisingly having fun. Sabrina was funnier than he'd given her credit for and even Chloé was almost tolerable, once he'd gotten used to her quirks.

And feeling strangely guilty about that tablet she'd purchased for him. That thing would've cost him a year's worth of allowance, assuming he saved up every last coin, but was chump change for Chloé.

"A bunch of things that normally don't go together, turned into art."

"I don't get it," Chloé insisted, but a few minutes later she had the almost brilliant idea of gluing a "miniature magazine" in the center, creating the magazine together from "pages" cut out from the various magazines she'd purchased today. The three of them searched her stack for the tiniest pictures they could find, and eventually ended up with a little square book of folded and glued together pages that refused to stay closed.

The scale was completely wrong and the final result looked nothing like a real magazine, but it was the first idea Chloé had come up with entirely on her own, and Nathaniel was almost proud of her for it.

X

Nathaniel had sort of hoped she wouldn't, but Chloé appeared at the very next art club meeting with Sabrina, both of them looking smug.

Alix shot a venomous glare and a snappy, "I've already seen your face enough today, no thanks," remark in their direction. Chloé's and Sabrina's, that was. Nobody aside from Marc knew about the whole Chloé asking him for help and buying him a tablet and working on a collage with him thing.

'Criticism in the art world is harsh,' Nathaniel silently remarked. 'Especially for someone who's main artistic ventures until this point are selfies and social media.'

It suddenly occurred to him that he'd never bothered asking Chloé why she wanted to be accepted by the art club in the first place. Or why she'd bought all that stuff just to get him to say yes, he would help her.

Undeterred, Chloé only smiled wider and shot back, "Oh please, I brought something else this time. I know now that uncultured people like yourself could never fully appreciate my _visage_ anyway."

Before Alix could respond, and Nathaniel knew how badly she wanted to, Chloé snapped her fingers and Sabrina whipped the collage out of her white canvas bag. Upside down.

"Ta-dah! These are all the things that describe me!"

Sabrina fixed her mistake before Chloé noticed, but Alix still rolled her eyes. Marinette crossed her arms and frowned in what looked like annoyance, although her silence made it hard to tell. Hidden in his favorite dark corner of the room, Marc offered a tiny smile of encouragement, and Nathaniel wasn't certain if it was intended for himself, Chloé, or both. It could have been directed at Sabrina, for all he knew.

And Nathaniel himself cringed. That was definitely not how he would've introduced this piece. He was a little too late at remembering – in fact, he was just now realizing he'd completely forgotten – to tell Chloé to give her artwork an actual title.

"That looks wonderful, Miss Bourgeois!" The club adviser exclaimed, and then like any true patron of the arts would, he quickly prompted, "What's it called?"

"Um...?"

"What's the name of your piece?"

"Oh, it's – 'All of the Things that Describe Me'!" Chloé replied, beaming with pride. Then she shot a look at Sabrina and practically hissed, "Sabrina, you never told me I had to name it!"

This time, Marinette actually groaned out loud. Not than Nathaniel blamed her. He probably would've done the same, except he'd somehow ended up mentoring Chloé and groaning in this particular situation seemed like a very un-mentorly thing to do.

Then Rose raced to the front of the room, squealing in a high-pitched voice,"Wow Chloé, it's so pretty!" and marveling over the glitter accents Chloé had _insisted_ on.

"Did you bring anything, Sabrina?" the art teacher asked, possibly to be fair, possibly because he was a genuinely nice guy that actually cared about whether or not Sabrina also had something to contribute.

"I made a watercolor portrait of my beloved bird, Einstein. Alas, it didn't turn out very well..."

The art teacher nodded sympathetically. "That's too bad. Maybe next time?"

Juleka moved to stand behind Rose, looking skeptical but also like she didn't want to dampen her friend's enthusiasm at the same time. "Are you going to be, like, a regular attendant now?" she asked Chloé.

"Chloé already has her next project planned," Sabrina bragged.

This was news to Nathaniel, who began to lean forward in his seat.

"The theme is 'People Chloé Tolerates being Around'!"

"That's right! Now that I'm an _artist_ , Daddy ordered the most expensive camera money could buy for me online. Everyone who wants to be in my next collage should come find Sabrina and myself after school, and line up in an orderly fashion so she can take pictures of us together with my brand new camera."

"That's just another selfie collage..." Alix sighed dryly, resting her chin on her palm.

But at least Rose was still excited. "Oh my gosh, Chloé, I would love to be in your collage! We can pick our outfits together, then paint our nails, and and and – "

"I would love to have you in my collage," Chloé interrupted Before she could explode. "Of course, all of my favorite people are already automatically in it, including Adrien and Sabrina and Ladybug and Daddy! The only person I'm missing is Nathaniel."

Several people in the room immediately shouted "What?!" and leaped from their chairs.

Or maybe it was only Nathaniel, making enough noise to account for three or four of him. But a cursory glance around the room reveals at least he wasn't the only one surprised-slash-confused and slightly horrified by this declaration.

"Oh, relax. Sabrina will take a picture of your boyfriend too."

All of this – having Chloé suddenly take an interest in his art club, mentoring her, Chloé apparently _liking_ him – is a little too much for Nathaniel to comprehend at the moment, and the only response he can manage is to weakly reply, "H-he's not my boyfriend..."


End file.
